OBJECT <> PLASTIC <> SEARCH

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Book on Stallinga’s designs, $40 new from amazon, but in the $10 range used.

Henk Stallinga is a renown Dutch industrial designer born September 25, 1962 in Tytsjerk, the Netherlands. Stallinga studied from 1988 to 1993 as an industrial designer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. He took part in the exhibition “Dutch Design in the Garden Cafe” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Blister Lamp, made of identical halves of PET G (Polyethylene terephthalate) packaging material, now discontinued, was installed there.

He is well known for his numerous clock designs for NeXtime and others. The Clock Calendar is one, a paper calendar with a hole cut out for a clock. The Clockwork Orange is another. Really it is two clocks, one with an hour and a second hand, the other with just a pendulum. One of Stallinga’s greatest talents is finding new functions for iconic forms unrelated to their original purpose. For example, a claw hammer head to serve as a wall hanger, a sponge that serves as a vase, a business card employed as knife and fork, and of course, the receiver and mouthpiece from a telephone with the indicator (that’s the blinker cap) from a Morris Mini.

Henk Stallinga’s “The Taste Of Talking”

When the two are screwed together, they become “The Taste Of Talking,” salt and pepper shakers made from ivory (the phone part) and transparent (the car part) plastic. Both parts previously unused! The box, shown below, describes the design:

“The Taste Of Talking” is designed by Henk Stallinga and forms part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The receiver and mouthpiece from the telephone are mounted on the indicators from a Morris Mini. Together they form the pepper and salt set “The Taste Of Talking”.

Stallinga’s design is often characterised as original, rough, poetic, witty, sober and economical. If you want to know more about him and his work then visit the website http://www.stallinga.nl/

The production of “The Taste Of Talking” has been made possible due to the contribution of Cunningham Lindsey Europe BV.

The 4 sides of the box.

Contact information for the author of this piece is available on his website. Click on the logo below to go to it:

It is still available new and at $22, worth having to become, well, a conversation piece.